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One of the bullets that killed a South Side youth last week was fired from a .22-caliber handgun
found with Nathaniel Brunner and Devonere Simmonds when they were arrested in Dayton on Saturday,
Columbus police say.

Brunner, 18, had the loaded revolver in his lap as he slept in the front passenger seat of a car
that had been taken from a man at gunpoint in Madison County that morning, police said yesterday.
Simmonds was asleep beside Brunner, in the driver’s seat of the idling Dodge Magnum.

Ballistics tests this week revealed the link between the gun and a bullet in the body of
17-year-old Lamont Frazier, police said. Frazier had been shot three times, but only one bullet was
found, they said.

The evidence tying the pair to Frazier’s killing was revealed in Franklin County Municipal
Court, where Judge Andrea C. Peeples ordered Brunner held on a murder charge in lieu of $500,000
bail. Brunner didn’t attend the brief proceeding.

Peeples already had set bail for him on Tuesday at $1.5 million in the July 24 slaying of South
Side carryout clerk Imran Ashgar. Brunner is being held in the county jail.

Simmonds also didn’t attend his preliminary hearing yesterday in Juvenile Court, but Assistant
County Prosecutor Dennis Hogan served him, his mother and his attorney with a motion asking the
court to transfer his case to adult court.

Simmonds was brought back to Columbus from Dayton on Tuesday and is being held in the Franklin
County Juvenile Detention Center. He is charged with two delinquency counts of murder, in Ashgar’s
shooting at an E. Livingston Avenue carryout and Frazier’s death a few hours later at Oakwood
Avenue and Forest Street.

In Ohio, juveniles charged with delinquency murder who are 16 or 17 at the time of the offense
are transferred to adult court at the prosecution’s request if a juvenile-court judge determines
there is sufficient evidence that they probably committed the crime. Juveniles can’t be sentenced
to death, even if convicted in adult court.

A hearing to consider Hogan’s motion was set for Monday before Juvenile Court Judge Kim A.
Browne, but the case probably will be continued while evidence is gathered and other charges are
considered.

Homicide detectives have learned that “a person reported being involved in a conversation with
Brunner and Simmonds when they admitted getting into an argument with and shooting Lamont Frazier,”
police said in court documents.

Police have not said what the argument was about, but Frazier’s grandmother has said he might
have known too much about other crimes Brunner and Simmonds committed.

Authorities say the two probably also will be charged with shooting a Virginia man in Madison
County to steal his car and in a double shooting in Columbus on July 21 that killed one man and
seriously wounded another.